Rebel

Cheese is the star at one of the world’s most enchanting restaurants in a Puglia forest. Plus, cold noodles to obsess over … how fish sauce caramel transforms instant noodles … the sexy steak videos transforming an Armenian meat shop … losing Birdie G’s pickle chicken … 6-to-1 grocery shopping … and an Angeleno’s connection to Mexican Chicago. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Slinging the blues

Cheesemaker Vito Dicecca, who built Baby Dicecca, a cheese bar in the Mercadante forest close to Altamura in Puglia, Italy.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

It’s been more than 15 years since I stumbled into Caseificio Dicecca, the shop of the famed cheesemaking Dicecca family in the Puglia city of Altamura, and bit into a round of freshly made burrata, the rich, oozing cream still warm. No burrata I’ve had since has equaled that first bite.

I had come to the region with chef Nancy Silverton, who was poking her head into the doors of the city’s many bakeries, sampling focaccia and the local bread that has a tradition so old the ancient Roman poet Horace called Altamura’s crusty loaves “by far the best bread to be had.”

Burrata is a much younger food. It wasn’t established in the region until the 1920s and Caseificio Dicecca is just one of several family-run operations in the area making the cheese that is now ubiquitous around the world — thanks in part to Silverton, who first started serving burrata in the 1990s at L.A.’s Campanile before she later opened her many Mozza restaurants.

The phenomenon got so out of hand that a burrata backlash was sparked, led by author Jeff Gordinier‘s 2019 Esquire story titled “F*** Your Burrata,” in which he argued that the appearance of the cheese on a menu “is like a billboard announcing, ‘The chef at this place has never had an original idea in his life …’”

Meanwhile, burrata sales continue to grow, with one estimate valuing the global market at more than $2 billion this year.

Last week, I returned to Puglia with Silverton, this time with author Alec Lobrano and several food-obsessed travelers. Silverton, who is a fan of Gordinier’s writing, read parts of his story aloud to the group even as she extolled her love for the maligned cheese. Especially when it is made by expert cheesemakers like the Diceccas.

And no one would ever accuse the Dicecca family of being unoriginal.

The cheese operation is now in the hands of five siblings — Vito, Paolo, Angelo, Vittoria and Maristella — who are the fourth generation to run the caseificio. At various points, the siblings left Altamura to travel the world and, in some cases, make cheese in places far away from Italy. But Altamura is their lodestar and several years back Vito Dicecca, who spent time in Japan, Thailand, Mexico, Australia and even lived for a bit in Southern California, not only brought back new cheesemaking ideas (the siblings make more than 300 varieties) he created one of the world’s most enchanting restaurants in the Mercadante Forest not far from Altamura.

Focaccia with fresh stracciatella at Baby Dicecca in Puglia’s Mercadante Forest.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

You may have seen an earlier version of the restaurant — which then was more of a kiosk — in the Puglia episode of Stanley Tucci‘s CNN series “Searching for Italy.” A few months ago, Vito Dicecca relocated and expanded his restaurant, Baby Dicecca, but it is still a very simple spot where the majority of diners eat outside surrounded by the trees of the forest.

“Proudly, we serve mostly cheese and some vegetables from our friends close to here,” Dicecca said as he welcomed the group. Even his wines are usually made by friends of his, he explained, as he poured “a natural, biodynamic sparkling wine” made with the Puglian Marasco grape from the producer L’Archetipo.

“I don’t buy the brand,” he said. “I like the people and then I’ll like the wine.”

What followed was a cheese lover’s feast, including focaccia draped in fresh, almost liquid stracciatella (or the “heart of mozzarella” as Dicecca put it on the menu) and “calzoncello alla Vito,” a handmade type of raviolo sauced with mozzarella whey and topped with a fresh grating of the aged cheese the family calls Dicecca Gold. To break up the richness, there was an heirloom tomato salad plus Vito’s take on a Caesar salad with seasonal greens mixed with fennel and celery plus a bit of honey and aged Pecorino. It may not have been a true Caesar, but it was delicious.

At one point Dicecca broke out a charcoal-colored loaf of bread made with grano arso, the burnt flour that also is used in some of the region’s pastas. He sliced the bread, drizzled it with local olive oil and then took a bundle of dried, wild oregano grown in the forest nearby and shook some of it on top of the slices.

Wild oregano is shaken on olive-oil-drizzled slices of bread made with grano arso, or burnt flour, at Baby Dicecca, a restaurant in Puglia, Italy.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Dessert was two kinds of gelato, including one with goat’s milk, oregano and honey, made on the spot by Dicecca’s friend — “a genius” — Maurizio Bonina.

But the climax of the meal was, of course, cheese. And it wasn’t burrata.

Amore Primitivo is Vito Dicecco’s fever dream of a cheese, a blue, aged variety that is soaked in local Primitivo wine for 100 days, turning the exterior deep purple. He places the whole cheese on a cake stand and then loads the top with macerated cherries. Once the group admires the cheese’s beauty, he slices and serves it atop guests’ hands like a caviar bump.

Only when you taste the cheese and its beautifully mellow funk does it become clear that this is not just a cheese for Instagram. This aged blue created in the land of fresh mozzarella exemplifies the best of the Italian spirit — a healthy respect for tradition infused with a risk taker’s desire for innovation.

“For the first three years, I didn’t sell one piece,” Dicecca told us. “My family was very mad at me. Friends of my dad, they said to him, ‘Tell your son, this is not a pastry shop, it’s a cheese shop.’”

For a time, he added, “I pretended to sell the cheese — I was giving it as a gift to friends. But now it’s one of the best sellers.”

These days, Caseificio Dicecca is almost as well known for its blue cheeses as it is for its fresh burrata and pasta filata family of stretched curd cheeses. They’ve experimented with more than 60 types of blue, including an ultra aged cheese, golden yellow on the inside, that Vito Dicecco named Surfing Blu. Who knows what he’ll think of next?

Baby Dicecca cheese bar is open from May through October.

Sexy steaks

Sevan Meat Market manager Norvan Simonian, right, and co-owner Serop Marukyan.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

More generational innovation, this time closer to home, as our favorite Grocery Goblin Vanessa Anderson reports in her latest dispatch on the social media ideas transforming an Armenian meat shop: “Sevan Meat Market’s social media videos — conceived by owner Hrach Marukyan, his son Serop and manager Norvan Simonian — tell an Armenian American story built on beef, a story of the old and new, of adaptation to a rapidly changing world. And their growing audience of now nearly 60,000 Instagram followers is eagerly tuning in.”

In a pickle

The “pickle chick” cutlet, front, plus the relish tray and knife-and-fork tomato sandwich at Jeremy Fox’s Birdie G’s, which will close in December.

(Shelby Moore / For The Times)

Last month, when I was at Birdie G’s in Santa Monica for a family get-together — and a taste of the restaurant’s famed “pickle chick” fried chicken cutlet — the place was packed, with the crowded valet station just one indication that this was a place people wanted to be. It seemed that chef and partner Jeremy Fox‘s vision for a chef’s take on a chain restaurant was ready to spread to other locations.

But as Fox told Food’s Stephanie Breijo this week, business has been inconsistent since the Palisades fire in January. “One month the sprawling restaurant’s seats would all be filled,” wrote Breijo, “the following, sales would drop by 40%.” And in the days right after the fire, Fox estimated that the restaurant’s revenue fell by 80%.

“That was a bloodbath,” Fox told Breijo, explaining his decision to close the restaurant on Dec. 31.

Until the end of the year, Fox and Birdie G’s co-owners, Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan, owners of the Rustic Canyon Family restaurant group, are planning more daily specials, ambitious large-format dishes, guest chefs and “one final run,” Breijo writes, “of the restaurant’s fan-favorite Hanukkah series, 8 Nights.”

“What’s the worst that could happen,” Fox said, “we go out of business?”

The great holiday cookie bake-off returns

(Leslie Grow / For the Times)

Here at L.A. Times Food we decided it had been too long since our last Los Angeles Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off — a tradition that began in 2010 and allowed us to connect with you, our readers, and your recipes. As Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock wrote in our recipe call, we are accepting recipe submissions until Monday, Oct. 13. If you’ve got a great holiday cookie recipe we want to hear from you.

Noodle cool-down

A bowl of Beijing Yanji cold noodles from Bistro Na’s restaurant in Temple City.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times )

Columnist Jenn Harris’ latest obsession is Bistro Na’s Beijing Yanji cold noodles. “It’s a tangle of buckwheat noodles in an ice-cold broth,” she writes, “with sliced beef shank, beef tongue, kimchi, watermelon, boiled egg, shredded cucumber, pickled radish and chile sauce all arranged over the top like a color wheel.” I think I need to return to the Temple City restaurant very soon for a bowl of my own.

Mexican as Chicago

Marcos Carbajal, left, and his father Inocencio Carbajal at their Little Village location of Carnitas Uruapan in Chicago.

(Carnitas Uruapan)

With so much of the Trump administration’s focus on Chicago, Food Editor Daniel Hernandez wrote about the city’s deeply established Mexican roots as seen in its restaurants from the perspective of a visiting Angeleno: “Los Angeles may have more Mexican residents in total numbers, but in terms of who makes up each city’s Latino population, Chicago is as Mexican as Los Angeles.”

Instant classic

Holy Basil’s chef and owner Deau Arpapornnopprat holds his ‘Yum Mama’ Instant Noodle Salad With Lime And Fish Sauce Caramel in the Times Test Kitchen.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Have you ever made fish sauce caramel? It could become your next kitchen essential. For our most recent “Chef That!” cooking video, Deau Arpapornnopparat, chef-owner of the Thai restaurants Holy Basil, came to the Times Test Kitchen to show us how he elevates instant noodles with easy-to-make fish sauce caramel and more toppings. As Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock wrote, the “dressing is classically sweet, sour, salty and spicy all at once.” Find the recipe here.

Curtis Stone’s ‘Field Trip’

To cap off the weekend of The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, presented by Square, we’ve added a free Sunday evening screening, reception and conversation on Oct. 12 featuring L.A. chef Curtis Stone with Michelin-starred chef Vicky Cheng of the acclaimed Hong Kong restaurants Wing and VEA. I’ll be talking with Stone and Cheng about the Hong Kong episode of “Field Trip With Curtis Stone” and more. It takes place at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. To sign up for free tickets, click here.

And although VIP tickets (allowing early entry) to The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market are sold out, general admission tickets remain for the two-night event taking place Oct. 10-11 at City Market Social House in downtown L.A. More than 40 restaurants are participating, including Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla L.A., Evil Cooks, Villa’s Tacos, Holy Basil and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

Also …

Kony faces charges for the Lord’s Resistance Army campaign of torture and abuse in Uganda in the early 2000s.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is slated to hear evidence against fugitive Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony two decades after his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) gained international infamy for atrocities in northern Uganda.

The Tuesday hearing, known as a “confirmation of charges”, is the Hague-based court’s first-ever held in absentia.

Kony faces 39 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection to the LRA’s campaign against the Ugandan government between 2002 and 2005, which prosecutors allege was rife with rape, torture, and abductions of children.

Kony has eluded law enforcement since the ICC first issued an indictment in 2005, making the hearing a litmus test for others in which arresting the suspect is considered a far-off prospect, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The hearing is expected to last three days and will allow prosecutors to outline their case in court, after which judges will decide whether to confirm the charges. Kony cannot be tried unless he is in ICC custody, however.

“Everything that happens at the ICC is precedent for the next case,” Michael Scharf, an international law professor at Case Western Reserve University, told The Associated Press news agency.

Kony was born in 1961 in northern Uganda’s village of Odek, where he was a Catholic altar boy and took up an interest in spirituality. He later claimed to be a spirit medium and used religious rituals – alongside violence and torture – to maintain control of followers.

The LRA’s attacks against the Ugandan government date back to the 1980s, but the group was not thrust into the international spotlight until 2012, when a #Kony2012 campaign went viral on social media.

By then, the LRA had been forced out of Uganda and was operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, where it continued its violent crusade. The LRA’s activities killed at least 100,000 people and displaced about 2.5 million in Africa, according to the United Nations, along with the kidnapping of children.

Survivors in Uganda plan to follow the ICC proceedings, including Everlyn Ayo, a 39-year-old whose school was first attacked by LRA fighters when she was five years old.

“The rebels raided the school, killed and cooked our teachers in big drums and we were forced to eat their remains,” Ayo told the AFP news agency. “Many times, on our return to the village, we would find blood-soaked bodies. Seeing all that blood as a child traumatised my eyes.”

The ICC has been under heavy pressure from Washington for its pursuit of cases surrounding Israel’s war on Gaza.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration had previously sanctioned the ICC in response to its investigation and subsequent arrest warrants issued for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.

Last month, the US announced a new round of sanctions targeting members of the ICC, the latest instance of a pressure campaign against the court.

On a wide, empty stretch of Venice Beach in 1980, seven Los Angeles architects — Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Coy Howard, Craig Hodgetts, Robert Mangurian and Frederick Fisher — gathered for a group portrait by photographer Ave Pildas. Clad in mismatched outfits and standing casually in the sand, they looked more like a rumpled rock band than the future of American architecture.

The resulting image, published in Interiors magazine, distilled a seismic moment in L.A.’s creative history. Those seven, gazing in their own directions yet joined in a sense of mischievous rebellion and cocky exuberance, represented a new generation that was bringing a brash, loose creativity to their work and starting to distance itself from the buttoned-up codes and expectations of the architecture establishment.

Each would go on to have a successful career, from Pritzker Architecture Prize winners to directors of architecture schools. And they and their compatriots would, for a while at least, help put a rapidly changing L.A. at the center of the built culture.

“That one photograph contains a whole world,” notes filmmaker Russell Brown, who recently directed a 12-part documentary series about that Venice architecture scene. “There was risk going on, and freedom; it was all about ideas.”

“It’s become a kind of reference point,” adds architectural journalist Frances Anderton, host of the series. “It just keeps reappearing whenever there’s a conversation about that period.”

The 1980 image is the jumping-off point for “Rebel Architects: From Venice to the World Stage,” produced by Brown’s nonprofit, Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles. Four of the architects — now in their 70s and 80s — gathered for a (far less brash) new photo and an honest conversation about their early careers in L.A., and what’s transpired since for the series, which began streaming monthly on FORT: LA’s website July 1.

A native Angeleno with a background in feature and documentary filmmaking, Brown conceived of the concept after a chat with architect Robert Thibodeau, co-founder of Venice-based DU Architects. After a deeper dive into the image with Anderton, the idea for a reunion was born.

“We thought, why don’t we restage the photo and then use that as an excuse to get the guys together?” Brown explains.

He preferred a spontaneous, lighthearted group discussion to the typical documentary, with its one-on-one interviews and heavy production.

Frances Anderton, from left, Frederick Fisher, Craig Hodgetts, Thom Mayne and Eric Owen Moss catch up for “Rebel Architects,” a 12-part series.

(FORT: LA)

“It’s about the chemistry between creative peers,” says Brown. “The real legacy of these architects isn’t just in the buildings. It’s in the conversations they started — and are still having.” He added: “There’s a spark that happens when they’re together … They talk about failure, competition, teaching, aging. It’s a very human exchange.”

Episode 1, titled “Capturing a Moment in L.A. Architecture,” opens with four of the surviving architects — Fisher, Mayne, Moss and Hodgetts — recreating that seminal photograph for Pildas and sitting down for an interview. (Howard was interviewed separately, Gehry declined and Mangurian died in 2023.) The group dissects the photo’s cinematic, informal composition, in which Pildas aims down from a berm, the neglected buildings behind the eclectic crew shrinking into the horizon, merging with the sand. And they remember a time in which the city’s messy urban forms and perceived cultural inferiority provided endless creative fuel, and liberation.

Pildas recalls how the original shoot came together at the request of British design editor Beverly Russell, who was looking to capture “Frank Gehry and some of his Turks.” (The international design press was gaga for L.A. at the time. Anderton notes that her move from the U.K. resulted from a similar assignment, on the “subversive architects of the West Coast,” for the publication Architectural Review in 1987.)

At the time, most of the architects were working in garages and warehouses, forming their studios and collaborating with equally norm-busting and (relatively) unheralded artists in the scrappy, dangerous, forgotten, yet exploding Venice scene. In a later episode, the architects start listing the art talents they would run into, or befriend, including Larry Bell, James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Fred Eversley, Robert Irwin, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name a few.

Basquiat was then living and working in Hodgetts’ building. “It was a spectacular fusion of all this creative energy,” Hodgetts remembers. “There was no audience, there were no guardrails, and one did not feel constrained.” He adds, later: “We all felt like we were marooned on a desert island.”

Pildas, who had studied architecture before switching to design and, eventually, photography, was uniquely suited to capture the group. He had shot some of the small, quirky experiments of Mangurian and Mayne, and knew most of the others through social and professional circles. (He even knew Hodgetts from high school back in Cincinnati.)

The first attempt at the photo seemed stiff, says Pildas, so he took out a joint, which all except Hodgetts accepted, he says. The icebreaker worked. In a later image, says Pildas, Fisher is hugging Gehry’s leg, the others huddled around. “It got pretty friendly in the end,” he jokes.

Pildas argues that the photo is much more layered with meaning (not to mention nostalgia) now than it was at the time. “Back then, it was just another magazine shoot. Now, it’s history,” he says. Adds Moss: “Its relevancy, or not, is confirmed by the following years. Otherwise it’s gone.”

Frederick Fisher, from left, Thom Mayne, Craig Hodgetts and Eric Owen Moss recreate their famous 1980 photo.

(Ave Pildas)

Each episode explores the image’s layers, and the unfolding stories that followed — the challenges of maintaining originality; crucial role of journalists in promoting their work; maddening disconnect between L.A.’s talent and its clients, along with the mercurial, ever-evolving identity of Los Angeles. The tone, like the photo, is unpretentious and playful, heavy on character and story, not theory. This was not always an easy task with a group that can get esoteric quite quickly, adds Anderton. “I was trying to keep it light,” she laughs. “I don’t think I even have the ability to talk in the language of the academy.”

“They’re cracking jokes, interrupting each other, reminiscing about teaching gigs and design arguments,” says Brown. “There’s real affection, but also a sense of rivalry that never fully went away.” Hodgetts doesn’t see it that way, however. “It was really about the joy of creating things. We wanted to jam a bit, perform together; that’s really life-affirming,” he says.

There are some revealing moments. Mayne, whose firm Morphosis is known for bold, city-altering buildings such as Caltrans HQ in downtown L.A., reflects on teaching as a way of “being the father I never had.” (His father left his family when he was a young boy.) He tenderly discusses the seminal role that his wife Blythe — a co-owner of Morphosis — has played in his career. Fisher reveals that Gehry was the chief reason he dropped everything to come out to L.A. (At the time, he was working as a display designer at a department store in Cincinnati.) “I remember seeing this architect jumping up and down on cardboard furniture. I could see there was something going on here. Something percolating,” he says. Moss opens up about his struggles to negotiate the demands of the practical world, while Hodgetts performs brilliant critiques of the others’ work, sometimes to broad smiles, others to cringes.

Notably absent from the reunion is Gehry himself, who is now 96. “He’s at a point in his life where trudging through sand for a photo wasn’t going to happen,” says Brown. “But his presence is everywhere. He’s still the elephant in the room.”

One episode explores how Gehry, about a decade older than the others, both profoundly influenced and often overshadowed the group — a reality that was perhaps reinforced by his nonchalant dominance in the photo itself. “Frank takes up a lot of oxygen,” Mayne quips. Still, all admire Gehry’s unwillingness to compromise creatively, despite often heavy criticism.

Another prevailing theme is the bittersweet loss of that early sense of freedom, and the Venice of the 1970s, with its breathtakingly low rents and abandoned charm. Today’s architects — wherever they are — face higher stakes, infinitely higher costs and tighter regulations.

“The Venice we grew up with is completely gone,” says Fisher. “But maybe it’s just moved,” noted Moss. Distinguishing L.A. as a place whose energy and attention is constantly shifting, he wonders if creative ferment might now be happening in faraway places like Tehachapi — “wherever land is cheap and ambition is high,” he says.

While Pildas was capturing the seven architects 45 years ago, he was also busy chronicling the city’s street culture — jazz clubs, boulevard eccentrics, decaying movie palaces and bohemian artists. All were featured in the 2023 documentary “Ave’s America” (streaming on Prime Video) directed by his former student, Patrick Taulère, exploring his six decades of humbly perceptive, deeply human work.

After reviewing the recreation of the photo — the architects are still smiling this time, but their scrappy overconfidence feels eons away — Pildas wonders who the next generation will be, and how they will rise.

“Maybe it’ll happen that they’ll have another picture someday with a bunch of new architects, right?” he says. “This is a fertile ground for architecture anyway, and always has been.”

Exposing that “fertile ground” to Angelenos of all kinds is FORT: LA’s overarching goal. Founded in 2020, it offers architecture trails, fellowships and a surprising variety of programming, from design competitions to architecture-themed wine tastings. All, says Brown, is delivered, like “Rebel Architects,” with a sense of accessible joy and exploration — an especially useful gift in a turbulent, insecure time for the city.

“Suddenly, you kind of think about the city in a different way and feel it in a different way,” says Brown. “This is a place that allows this kind of vision to come to life.”

Scores of civilians were killed during fierce confrontations between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army and the Convention pour la Révolution Populaire (CRP) armed syndicate. The Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO), another rebel group, compounded the violence, launching a series of attacks in rural communities of the Djugu territory, particularly in Nizi and Lopa.

The attacks have grounded economic activities in the principal centres of Iga-Barriere, Lopa, and Jina, interrupting traffic on the Number 27 national highway.

“The security situation has been relatively calm since yesterday in Lopa, Nizi, Iga-Barriere and its environs. Right now, socio-economic activities have still not resumed, and there are ongoing negotiations for the resumption of activities after clashes between the Congo army and rebels of the Convention pour la Revolution Populaire, before the incursion of CODECO militia,” Freddy Lotsima, a civil society leader in Lopa, revealed.

Amid growing concerns regarding the handling of the security crisis in Ituri, the military has refused to respond to various claims of misconduct by its personnel. Gratien Iracan, a leader in the Bunia constituency, however, claimed that between July 13 and 21, over 30 civilians were killed in Djugu alone.

“Unarmed civilians murdered in cold blood without the protection of the army and the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO). Elements of the loyalist forces, as well as CODECO militia, have been accused by members of the local communities,” Lotsima added.

MONUSCO has condemned the attacks on civilian populations in the Djugu territory, as well as the looting and desecration of the Catholic parish of Lopa, which have been attributed to the CODECO armed group. The UN forces have been encouraging provincial authorities to promote dialogue among all communities in Ituri to help reduce tensions.

In the Masisi territory of North Kivu, intense fighting has been ongoing since 2 a.m. on Friday, July 25, between M23 rebels and the Wazalendo militia in the Luke area, part of the Nyamaboko 1 tribal group. Local sources revealed that the Wazalendo militia launched coordinated attacks on rebel positions to reclaim control of the area.

The sounds of heavy and light weapon detonations were heard in the combat areas. This situation has raised concerns among residents of nearby communities, who have been receiving displaced individuals from Luke and Katobotobo in the Katoy region.

Representatives of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have signed a deal in Qatar to end fighting in the eastern DRC. The declaration commits parties to an eventual peace agreement that includes the restoration of state authority in the country’s east.

Ta’ang National Liberation Army rebels did not acknowledge the loss of Nawnghkio town to the military, saying they moved to ‘safe locations’.

Myanmar’s military government has claimed to have removed rebel fighters and recaptured a town after a yearlong battle near the country’s main army training academy, marking a rare turnaround for the regime in the northeast region of the country.

The country’s ruling military announced on Thursday that it made the advance in Shan State’s town of Nawnghkio, which had been under the control of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

The rebel group, part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, had seized the strategically important town, which sits on a key highway linking central Myanmar to China, in July 2024.

In a statement published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar, the military government said it had retaken Nawnghkio after “566 armed engagements within 11 operational months”. A rare one-page spread in the newspaper showed soldiers holding rifles aloft in celebration. It detailed the battle, admitting initial attacks led to officers and enlisted men “sacrificing their lives”.

But “by combining strategic ground and air military tactics”, the military captured “the whole Nawnghkio area” by Wednesday, it said.

Nawnghkio is located about 40km (25 miles) from Pyin Oo Lwin, the town that hosts the country’s main military officer training academy, and some 80km (50 miles) from Myanmar’s second-most populous city, Mandalay.

In a statement, the TNLA did not acknowledge the military government’s claim of victory, saying only that “it has been difficult to continue administrative work in the town due to the heavy offensive”. The TNLA added that it had “moved civil administration services to safe locations”.

While the combined rebel offensive against government forces has inflicted sweeping losses since it was launched in October 2023, analysts say the military government’s control over large population centres is secure as it wields an air force capable of staving off large-scale rebel advances.

Northeastern Lashio city was also captured by the rebels but was handed back to the ruling military in April after a deal brokered by China.

Since a 2021 military coup toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and ignited a civil war in Myanmar, a myriad of pro-democracy armed groups and ethnic rebel armies have joined forces to fight against military rule.

The groups in the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which also include the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Arakan Army, have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. The alliance is also loosely allied with the People’s Defence Force, a pro-democracy resistance group that has emerged to fight the military regime.

Efforts to win over holdout House Republicans extend into early hours as Trump’s tax and spending bill hits hurdles.

Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have been locked in a dramatic impasse over President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending package, as a rebel group of lawmakers failed to support the bill that all Democratic representatives oppose.

Debate is currently under way at the House after the bill passed its last procedural hurdle in the early hours of Thursday, local Washington, DC, time. The final vote is expected in a few hours.

The standoff over the Trump administration’s flagship domestic policy package, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill, stretched into the early hours of Thursday, as the Republican leadership worked furiously to try to persuade holdouts to send the bill to Trump’s desk by a Friday, July 4 deadline, US Independence Day, while Trump railed against the rebels on social media.

“For Republicans, this should be an easy yes vote. Ridiculous!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

“Largest Tax Cuts in History and a Booming Economy vs. Biggest Tax Increase in History, and a Failed Economy. What are the Republicans waiting for?” he added, threatening that “MAGA is not happy, and it’s costing you votes.”

Earlier, Five Republicans voted “no” in the procedural vote to advance the legislation, while eight had yet to cast a vote.

Assuming all Democratic members cast a vote against the bill, Trump can afford to lose only three Republican votes if it is to advance to a final vote.

Centrepiece legislation

The hefty 800-page bill, the centrepiece of the president’s domestic agenda, combines sweeping tax cuts, spending hikes on defence and border security, and cuts to social safety nets into one giant package.

But it faces opposition within Trump’s Republican Party, with moderate critics expressing concern about its cuts to social safety-net programmes like Medicaid, and conservatives baulking at the trillions it is likely to add to the national debt.

Five Republicans voted against the bill: representatives Victoria Spartz of Indiana, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Keith Self of Texas, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had summoned lawmakers to Washington for a roll call vote, in a bid to capitalise on the momentum of the bill’s passage a day earlier in the Senate and win House approval ahead of the July 4 national holiday.

Lawmakers had passed the bill by a 51 to 50 vote in the Republican-controlled chamber on Tuesday, after Vice President JD Vance broke the tie.

But the risky gambit to hold the roll call vote swiftly hit hurdles, with some Republican lawmakers resisting the request to rubber stamp the Senate version of the bill so soon after it passed.

‘Bad bill to enrich those who are already rich’

Johnson said he would keep voting open “as long as it takes”, as senior Republicans attempted to persuade holdouts to support the bill.

He said he believed that the Republican holdouts were “going to come on board”, and expected to proceed to a final vote on the legislation in the early hours of Thursday morning, The New York Times reported.

As Republicans remain deadlocked, Democrats ramped up their criticisms of the policy package. In a video message posted on social media, Representative Chuy Garcia described the legislation as a “bad bill to enrich those who are already rich”.

It’s past midnight in DC and Republicans are still trying to rip healthcare and food from working families to give tax breaks to billionaires. Call your Republican representative and tell them to vote HELL NO pic.twitter.com/IfyXFdSaqs

— Congressman Chuy García (@RepChuyGarcia) July 3, 2025

So far, 217 House Representatives have voted against advancing the legislation, including five Republicans, while 207 are in favour.

Members can change their vote until voting closes, and eight Republicans have yet to vote. The bill needs 218 votes to advance.

Well, what did you expect?

When la migra raids workplaces and tries to enter schools and is vowing to do even more, L.A. ain’t going to roll out the red carpet and throw roses at them.

When Donald Trump calls up 2,000 National Guardsmen to clear the way for his immigration goons, over the strenuous objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, this city is going to push back even harder.

When Trump takes to social media to claim that “once great” Los Angeles “has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals” and that his administration will stop at nothing “to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion,” we’re going to do something about it.

But this?

Throwing cinder blocks and e-scooters at California Highway Patrol cars from a 101 Freeway overpass? Ripping out the pink tables and benches from Gloria Molina Grand Park to create a makeshift barricade on Spring Street near City Hall? Tagging small businesses, vandalizing the old Los Angeles Times headquarters, skidding a car around the bandstand at La Placita Olvera?

That’s supposed to keep immigrant families safe and defeat Trump?

This is what many people are muttering to themselves after a weekend of protests that ended with chaos in downtown Sunday night. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell called the damage “disgusting.” Bass posted on social media that “destruction and vandalism will not be tolerated in our City and those responsible will be held fully accountable.” U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla told KTLA 5 News that it was “counterproductive.” In a statement, Eastside Assemblymember Mark González decried “agitators [whose] actions are reckless, dangerous and playing into exactly what Trump wants.”

Uprisings have a time and place, but not when they’re a trap you willingly run into. That’s what L.A. is dealing with now, and for weeks, if not months — years! — to come.

Trump called in the National Guard to set in motion his dream of crushing the city and using us as an example for other sanctuary jurisdictions of what happens if they dare defy him. L.A. is everything he loathes: diverse, immigrant-friendly, progressive and deeply opposed to him and his xenophobic agenda. He called in the Guard, even though the skirmishes between protesters and law enforcement that happened Friday in the Garment District and Saturday in Paramount were about as rowdy as when the Dodgers lose in the National League championship series.

The president knew the deployment would be incendiary, and that was the point: Goad L.A. into setting itself on fire.

A demonstrator waves a Mexican flag in front of a dumpster fire Sunday after another night of unrest during a protest against immigration raids in Los Angeles.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

The National Guard has largely stood by as police officers and sheriff’s deputies beat back unruly crowds who see them as an invading force, even though McDonnell and Sheriff Robert Luna have repeatedly stated that their agencies don’t enforce immigration laws. The clashes led to visuals — protesters flying the flags of Mexico and other Latin American countries as a counterpoint to the Trump administration’s white supremacy, cars in flames, graffiti — that went worldwide and cast the City of Angels as a City in Hell.

Now, Trump is pouncing on L.A. like a cat on a mouse.

Now, Department of Defense head Pete Hegseth has taken a break from his plan to scrub the names of civil rights heroes from naval ships — instead, he’s threatening to send Marines to L.A.

Now, Trump is roaring on social media — “Paid insurrectionists” and “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” — like the mad king he is. Now, law enforcement from across Southern California are descending on L.A. to keep the peace.

This is what Los Angeles deserves?

At moments like these, I remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous maxim that “a riot is the language of the unheard,” even as he described riots in the same 1967 speech as “socially destructive and self-defeating.” Most who took to the streets last weekend are righteously angry at what Trump has done, and plans to do, to L.A. But their fury was too easily co-opted by the few who want to wantonly destroy and used the cover of protest to do so.

L.A. is famously a city that turns on itself when people have had enough, from the Zoot Suit riots to the George Floyd protests, the Watts rebellion of 1965 and the L.A. uprising of 1992.

“We might fight amongst each other/But I promise you this: we’ll burn this bitch down, get us pissed,” Tupac Shakur famously sang in “To Live and Die in L.A.”

It’s a tendency I can’t fully embrace or condemn — because I get both sides. But we can always do better — and we usually do. L.A. is also the city of the 2006 Day Without Immigrants, where hundreds of thousands peacefully marched through the same downtown streets now in shambles. Where students organize walkouts and sit-ins to fight for a better education. Where working class folks stage electoral upsets against the powers that be.

Revolts in L.A. don’t always need literal flames — because the ones that burn brightest and longest are moral and philosophical.

Protesters shut down the 101 Freeway on Sunday as they clash with law enforcement in downtown Los Angeles over the immigration raids in L.A.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

So I challenge all the folks simmering with rage against Trump’s war against L.A. and itching to do something about it — and that should be every Angeleno right now — to rebel smarter.

It’s easy to chuck rocks at a cop car. How about becoming a political prisoner a la SEIU California President David Huerta, who was arrested Friday for allegedly blocking a law enforcement van from executing a search warrant?

Setting fires to garbage cans in the middle of a street is old hat — how about providing shelter to undocumented families living with the terrifying reality that their time in this country might soon be up? Fanning out across downtown with no real destination is an L.A. tradition — what about joining the many immigrant rights groups who have set up rapid response networks to show up where la migra does?

The feds don’t play — but neither does L.A. Let’s show the world what we do at our best.

Overnight strikes hit Houthi drone manufacturing sites, says British Defence Ministry.

Forces from the United States and the United Kingdom have carried out joint air strikes near Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, targeting what British authorities say were drone manufacturing facilities of the Houthi armed group.

The UK on Wednesday morning offered a detailed explanation for launching the strike, unlike the US, which gave few details about hundreds of strikes it has conducted since beginning its renewed campaign on March 15.

The strikes, which took place about 24km (15 miles) south of Sanaa overnight, hit buildings identified by UK intelligence as sites used to produce drones that have been used in attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, according to the British Ministry of Defence.

The ministry said the operation was planned to minimise civilian casualties, though no figures were provided.

The US, which has launched repeated strikes on Houthi targets over the past month, has yet to comment on the joint operation.

In mid-March, US President Donald Trump ordered the military to wage “decisive and powerful” strikes on the Houthis so long as they continue targeting shipping in the Red Sea.

Since then, the Pentagon says the strikes have hit more than 1,000 targets across Yemen, “killing Houthi fighters and leaders … and degrading their capabilities”.

But concerns about civilian casualties are growing.

According to Houthi-affiliated media, a recent US strike on Monday hit a detention centre holding African migrants, killing 68 people.

And Mwatana for Human Rights, a Sanaa-based rights group, says it has documented hundreds more civilian casualties in recent US attacks.

“For over a decade of armed conflict, Yemeni civilians have been the targets of indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks by warring parties,” said Radhya al-Mutawakel, chairwoman of Mwatana.

“At a time when they were hoping to see an end to this bloody chapter of their lives, they now find themselves potential targets of US forces’ attacks,” she added.

An unnamed US defence official told the Reuters news agency that the Pentagon is aware of claims of civilian casualties from Monday’s strike and is conducting an assessment.

The Houthis have controlled large swaths of Yemen for nearly 10 years. Since November 2023, they have been launching missile and drone attacks on what they say are Israel-linked vessels in the Red Sea, disrupting global supply routes.